Episode 4: “Born to the Purple”

Babylon 5‘s first proper love story revolves around the most unlikely subject, Londo Mollari, while security chief Garibaldi tracks down someone who’s making clandestine phone calls over the super-secure line. Will it lead to sabotage? Point to conspiracy? Or provide a weepy character moment?

Meanwhile, on 2014 Earth, Chip repeatedly gets himself into trouble for making unfavorable analogies to movies and television shows that Erika and Shannon like and Erika unforgivably steals Chip’s thing.

“I worked [at Filmation] a few years on He-Man, She-Ra, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and did treatments for new cartoon series. The most exciting was Dragonriders of Pern, the Anne McCaffrey series, and I had many pleasant chats with her. We never did sell it, but she did use some of what I had created in her next Dragonriders novel and was nice enough to credit me for it.”

I’ve moved a comment and its reply to the Earhart’s spoiler thread for “Born to the Purple.” Going forward, I’d like to try and make the podcast threads safe for new viewers to read. I’ll make a note on future podcast posts pointing the way back to the spoiler thread. Is that all right with everyone?

To be honest, I found this one to be a bit boring. Not that I didn’t buy the romance, because both actors sold the hell out of that. It was more that maybe they did too good a job. We never got to see a point at which she was willing to betray him, or a point at which he was either distrusting or angry enough to do her harm. There just wasn’t much tension to the romance itself, and the paper thin external plot didn’t seem to have enough weight to be a real threat. (see podcast on silly heavies with sunglasses) It just didn’t hold my interest.

The character bits for the rest of the cast were good, but perhaps less interesting if you don’t know where they are going. Mostly I feel like we could have gotten what we needed from this episode with a 15min. clip show, and edit out the plot entirely.

I kept myself entertained through it by trying to deconstruct those Centuri costumes. They ridiculous, and yet somehow pleasing to look at. Plus (as stated on the podcast) they tell us way more about the culture they come from than is written in the text. So cheers for costuming!